Televisions have become common in our daily lives. Almost every household has multiple televisions and uses them for a variety of purposes such as watching news, soap operas, sports events and the like. Television users sometimes would like the televisions to have the capabilities to delay a program for later viewing (“pause”) during transmission by the broadcast center. Pause capability herein means that a particular scene of a television program is paused during transmission by the broadcast center and television scenes broadcast subsequent to the paused scene are stored for delayed viewing. With pause capability, the television scenes subsequent to the particular scene that was paused are stored and shown on the television receiver after a user deactivates the pause function. There is no loss of the subsequent scenes received by the television while the pause function was activated.
Conventional television receivers lack the capability of pause because they have no means to temporarily store the broadcast television signal. In other words, the television broadcast signal is displayed on conventional television receivers as it is received without being stored anywhere.
Conventional video cassette recorders (VCRs) may provide a pause-like function in conjunction with a conventional television, but the pause-like function of conventional VCRs does not delay and store television signals received at the tuner, but rather stops the video tape play of recorded television programs. That is, conventional VCRs have to first record the television programs on a videotape while a television program is being broadcast, and later the playing of the tape and thus the output of the signal can be paused. In addition, conventional VCRs record the television programs in analog format on analog videotape, so the video quality is not good and will deteriorate even further as the videotape is played repeatedly. Furthermore, videotapes cannot be used more than a certain number of times to record and erase video content. Thus, video tapes have to be replaced after being used a certain number of times.
Likewise, conventional digital video recorders (DVRs) may also provide a pause-like function in conjunction with a conventional television, but the pause-like function of conventional DVRs does not delay and store television signals received at the tuner, but rather stops the play of television programs recorded on the storage media. That is, conventional VCRs have to first record the television programs on a storage media while a television program is being broadcast, and later the playing of the tape and thus the output of the television signal is paused.
Therefore, there is a need for an apparatus for viewing television with pause capability. There is also a need for an apparatus for viewing television with pause capability wherein the television signals are temporarily stored in digital format such that the image quality does not deteriorate as it is replayed. There is also a need for an apparatus for viewing television with capability wherein the television signals are stored in a medium that can be almost permanently used without having to replace the storage medium.